Want to know why Biden will lose in 2024? Just look at why Hillary lost in 2016.
She lost because 6.7 million voters – mostly young, independent, or of color – who voted for Obama in 2012, either stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate. When asked why, their predominant reason was that they disliked both major candidates, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken in June 2017.
For similar reasons, Hillary nearly lost in New Hampshire. She squeaked out a victory over Trump in New Hampshire by a mere half percent.
Democratic voters in New Hampshire are in the same place now with the Biden-Trump matchup. They don’t like either candidate, but Joe Biden in particular. The latest St. Anselm poll shows Trump overtaking Biden here in the Granite State.
What does the Biden team want to do about it? Why, they want to use a strategy of “whataboutism,” pointing to Trump’s cognitive foibles to distract voters from Biden’s growing age-related impairments. They are coupling that with cheerleading Joe’s past accomplishments, buying into what used to be solely a Trumpian notion – that only he can do it.
However, none of that addresses the mountainous obstacle at hand – Biden’s steady decline. Moreover, it has no hope of convincing these swing voters that they should deny what they see with their own eyes. Let’s face it – the emperor has no clothes!
Eighty percent of the electorate agrees that Biden is too old to do another term according to a post-debate CNN poll. To proceed upon the premise that we Democrats can gaslight voters into accepting an alternate reality is tantamount to a suicide pact: “Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid and it will all be fine.” It won’t.
Ironically, it was the DNC that orchestrated this mess.
Like a script right out of a Greek tragedy, it attempted to avoid exposing Biden’s deterioration by insulating him from challenges to his incumbency from viable candidates who were bullied out of contention here in our historic primary vetting ground. Instead, Biden and the DNC favored a coronation in South Carolina where Democrats vote as they’re told.
They took that strategy right out of the 2020 Trump playbook. Joe then said he “earned the right” to be the nominee, but just as with Trump’s coronation in 2020, nothing was proven or earned by such a sham process. In this way, Democrats, despite a strong seasoned bench, were denied the chance to weigh in on formidable future leaders – the very ones Joe said in 2020 that he would “be the bridge to.” So he lied – another behavior adopted from Trump, along with calling us disaffected party members “elitists.”
We are, however, the rank-and-file Democrats and we are being asked to take to the streets to convince independents, suburban women, blacks, progressives, and young voters – the same swing voters who were lost by Hillary in 2016, and whose support in 2020 Biden is shedding fast – that they must vote for a president incapable of serving another full term, while loudly exclaiming, “But just look at the other guy!” However, even if Biden were to win the big three swing states in which he still leads (amazingly) – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – he will nonetheless fail to attain the required 270 electoral votes if he fails to take New Hampshire. This time, as it was in 2000 with Gore vs. W, as New Hampshire goes, so goes the election. And Biden is not going to flip New Hampshire back into his column short of a “Cocoon” visit from Don Ameche!
In the real world, the winning strategy for Democrats is to eliminate the age issue on our side altogether by convincing Joe to step down. Trump’s own decline, and it is significant, will then become clear. After all, 60 percent in that CNN poll said Trump is too old to run. Obviously, the easiest replacement for Biden is Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now polling even with Trump (CNN poll post-debate). Moreover, in a poll conducted by The Economist in June, Kamala was actually doing better than Biden with these key groups of disaffected swing voters as well.
Kamala Harris has a decent track record with New Hampshire voters. When she ran for president in 2019, she identified as a progressive out of the box on reproductive rights, Medicare-for-all, and the Green New Deal. She then tore Joe Biden apart in a debate, rising to a statistical tie with him for first place here. Kamala later faltered, however, but only after backtracking on those initial progressive stands as she tried to carve out a moderate niche for herself with so many other progressives in the race, but that strategy backfired. Her voters simply drifted to more proven progressive candidates like Sanders and Warren.
Nonetheless, Kamala remained the most popular second choice here, so New Hampshire Democrats definitely liked her. Meanwhile, Biden began slipping in the polls from that moment on, finishing fifth and had to be resurrected in South Carolina. In fact, Kamala most likely resurrected him here in New Hampshire in the general when she became his VP pick. Kamala, as the nominee today, would eliminate the age issue for Democrats, appeal to swing voters, and take New Hampshire firmly out of the loss column. Democrats simply need to look at the evidence in front of them and act accordingly.
During the 2020 primary season, as chairman of the Berlin Democratic Committee, I was fortunate enough to meet the presidential candidates, including Joe Biden. I told him I would have great difficulty carrying his banner if he were the nominee because of his poor record on climate action. He clasped my hand, looked me straight in the eye, and, smiling, said, “Stay tuned. You will like what you see!” He was right. His positions on climate action changed dramatically and we progressives supported him in the end. Democrats are proud of his accomplishments on that and other critical issues, and particularly for our best-in-the-world post-pandemic economy. Now, with impending interest rate cuts by the Fed, the unfolding recession-proof landing into normalcy will be Biden’s crowning achievement.
However, his apparent decline is nonetheless an insurmountable impediment to reelection, so if he is still listening to us New Hampshire progressives who stuck with him to help win this state in 2020, I say:
“Joe, you won’t win here now, yet Democrats can’t do it without New Hampshire. Step aside and be remembered as another George Washington, instead of the Democrat who ushered in the end of democracy. Save both the republic and the planet. Make Kamala president!”
